It is the unfortunate truth that CSS support in Web browsers has not been perfect. Only recently have browsers even begun to reach a full and correct implementation of CSS1, and thus turned their eyes to implementing CSS2. Knowing the potential trouble spots can save authors a great deal of frustration. As of this writing, CSS2 support was not advanced enough to merit its own chart. In fact, the only portions of CSS2 which could reasonably be charted are selectors (minimal adoption) and positioning (bugs galore). The rest of CSS2 is either not supported, or partially supported. It is true that Navigator 6 and Opera 5 have pretty good CSS2 support, but they also have pretty poor market penetration.

Given the name and nature of the box model, it’s not terribly surprising that the vast majority of Web sites using CSS end up looking a little “boxy” except the paged media styles. Straight lines abound in CSS-centric designs because the edges of CSS elements are straight.

In the past, designers were too busy struggling with browser bugs to confront this issue. When four different browsers display your markup in four different ways, you don’t have much time to think of life “outside the CSS box.”

Today, though, is a different story. Our understanding of CSS, and the browsers’ ability to interpret CSS, has risen to such a level that designers are now asking, “Why do our sites have to look like this? Why am I limited in this way?”

Having a million Web sites that all look fundamentally the same isn’t a good advertisement for CSS, nor is it going to impress our clients or bosses. Sure, our sites are easier to maintain, and, yes, we can make site-wide changes by altering single CSS files. But who cares when our work looks just like every other boxy CSS creation out there?

What we need, and what CSS needs to ensure its popularity, is a way of blurring these straight lines and of rounding these corners. We must find a way to hide the fact that our site is made up of a series of rectangles, and present a more varied, more designed front. Because we can’t alter the way CSS functions, we must create an illusion of change evey advanced css css dvp driver errors located in the css forum.

Thus, we have undertaken to chart support for the part of CSS which has the widest acceptance: CSS1. In the following chart, each property and value is given a support rating for each browser on the chart.

To take an example we’re all familiar with, let’s think of photographs and the frames we use to display them. Photographs pretty much come in one shape: rectangles, but photo frames come in an amazing variety of shapes. Photos displayed in these differently shaped frames appear to be the shape of the frame, even though they are still rectangular.

The lesson to learn here is that you can take one photo, slip it into any kind of frame, and give the illusion of having changed the shape of that photo. That’s exactly what we’re trying to achieve with CSS and our site designs: hiding the dull, dictated, underlying structure, and instead presenting an interesting web work.